


Reset and Restart

by pagerunner



Series: the echoes of our choices [3]
Category: Borderlands
Genre: M/M, gayperion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:13:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagerunner/pseuds/pagerunner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Rhys comes to after his painful ECHO crash and reboot, it turns out he's got a few unresolved matters to discuss with Vaughn--like that unexpected kiss this morning, and everything it might yet mean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reset and Restart

Rhys hadn’t told anyone, not even Vaughn, but ever since he'd gotten the ECHO implants, his dreams had become somewhat…strange.

Ordinary dreams were surreal enough, but these days, things kept creeping in around the edges. Things that felt like data flow. Some nights that was all he even saw: just rows of numbers, echoes of information that he’d accessed, wireframes of things he’d scanned. The day after his glitch, it was broken schematics. Everything that had been refreshed in the ECHO reboot was flashing past, but out of order and weirdly distorted—just like it had been when everything went haywire. It was memory as nightmare, but digital memory, from the electronic side of his brain.

The dream only retreated from becoming terrifying when his ordinary mind intruded. It seemed determined to remind him that he’d mended this. That someone had helped him mend this. It injected color again, _reality_ again…and the memory of touch. Hands on his face. The brush of someone’s lips.

His fingers were at his mouth when he woke up.

The room was quiet, all signs of time indistinct. The wide, narrow window above his bed showed only the usual starscape, and his clock had been knocked aside somehow, so there wasn’t much to go by. He could have pulled up the time on his ECHO display. He decided against it.

Instead, Rhys lay there with his head still aching and fingers lightly tracing over his lower lip. At last he levered himself up with the robotic arm. It didn’t argue with him this time, at least, even if his head did. He swore under his breath, waiting for the wooziness to subside.

When it did, he finally saw that Vaughn was asleep in a chair in the corner of the room.

He must have been working remotely all day. There were two empty coffee mugs on the side table, propped atop a notebook and a scattering of printouts, and he held two pages in one hand, although others had slipped to the floor. His glasses were still running a digital readout over one eye, as if he’d been working when he drifted off. Stress lines were etched deep around his eyes and mouth. Rhys watched him, trying to decide what to do, and listened to his quiet, anxious snore.

Finally more pressing needs won out, and he got up to make his way to the bathroom.

Relief came in stages, after he wrestled off his slept-in clothes, used the toilet and washed up, and did his best to fix his rumpled hair. In the mirror, he could see his cybernetic eye make minute adjustments in focus. Rhys rubbed absently beneath it, then touched one cheek. He knew he’d cried earlier—embarrassingly, but it had been hard to stop at the time—yet his skin didn’t feel tight or tearstained. Vaughn must have helped clean him up while he slept.

The thought made him flush. Rhys turned from the mirror, kicked his discarded clothes toward the laundry pile, and padded out to find something more comfortable to wear.

Vaughn started waking up when Rhys opened his closet and rattled the hangers.

“Um,” he heard, and then, “Rhys? Are you—“ before Vaughn’s voice cut off in a yelp. Rhys turned, holding the same hoodie Vaughn had found for him after surgery a few weeks ago. He was just in time to see Vaughn jolt up from the chair and send more papers flying, some from his hands, some from underfoot; he’d skidded one heel while trying to push himself upright, and landed even more awkwardly in the chair as a result.

“Uh,” Vaughn said, adjusting his glasses and trying again to right himself. “You’re…”

Rhys blinked at him, then down at himself. Yep: still naked except for his bright yellow boxers and his socks. “Oh.”

“Would you put something _on_ , please?”

Vaughn’s voice was oddly strangled. Rhys took the hint and yanked on the hoodie, feeling something soft thump his side while he tugged the fabric down. Vaughn had just tossed a pair of sweatpants across the room. 

“Thanks?” Rhys said dryly, bending down to scoop them up. He made a point of not checking to see if Vaughn was watching. He only raised his head once he’d pulled the ties tighter around his hips.

And yeah, _that_ Vaughn was watching.

Rhys, feeling an odd, anticipatory tingle prickling along his nerves, ran a hand self-consciously through his hair. That probably didn’t help. 

“Are you feeling any better?” Vaughn asked at last, still eyeing him strangely. Rhys sat on the edge of his bed. 

“Yeah. My head still hurts, but I’m not glitching, so…bonus?” Rhys cracked a smile. “ _You_ look like hell, though. How long have you been out?”

That distracted Vaughn at last, and he made a worried face at the mess scattered around him. “Oh, crap. Anderson’s still expecting my reports by EOD, and I don’t have half the—”

“Leave it,” Rhys said. Vaughn, who was halfway through plucking a page off the floor, gave him an astonished look. Rhys pulled up his palm-display ECHO interface. “Just give me a sec.”

“Rhys, what are you doing?”

Rhys flapped the other hand at him. Even working through a lingering headache, it didn’t take long to navigate through the Hyperion directory and find Vaughn’s boss’ calendar. All of his cybernetic functions were running more efficiently after the reboot, and it felt oddly gratifying sailing through the system like this.

“I’m giving you a grace period.” Rhys made a quick tweak to a series of delivery dates, inserted a note, signed out, and winked at Vaughn with his still-lit ECHO eye. “Your reports are all now due end of day tomorrow. Anderson’s on the hook for the delay, not you. You’re welcome.”

“I’m…not sure whether to thank you or smack you.”

Rhys took a chance. “I’d take both,” he said blithely.

Sure enough, Vaughn flushed such a deep shade of red that it was kind of extraordinary. He turned aside and finished gathering the papers, looking everywhere but at Rhys. Rhys finally cleared his throat. “Vaughn, listen…”

His friend stood up, fingers crumpling his printouts into a disastrous mess. “Dude, just…don’t start screwing with me right now.”

“Hey, wait a minute.”

Rhys’ protest had been honestly confused, but Vaughn looked dead serious. Rhys went silent, thinking of the look in his friend’s eyes this morning. He’d been just as serious then. Sure, the medical crisis may have called for it, but when Vaughn had impulsively pressed close afterward…he’d meant that, too.

Even if now he was trying to duck away from it.

“I’m just going to tell you—I didn’t mean to do all that, this morning,” Vaughn told him, anxiously rubbing the side of his face with one hand. “You freaked me out, and I got emotional, and that happened, but…I wasn’t ever planning on…”

“Kissing me?”

Rhys’ voice came out softer than he’d been expecting. Vaughn replied almost sullenly, “Honestly, I’d hoped you’d forget that part.”

“Is that why you’re mad? That I remembered?”

Vaughn cast up his hands, apparently giving up on the papers he’d collected, which went flying to all corners of the room again. “Well, if you _didn’t_ forget, which you obviously haven’t, and then you came parading in here almost naked—“

“That was an accident. I didn’t know you were awake!”

“—and making smartass jokes—“

“That,” Rhys admitted, “was less of an accident.”

“Just…don’t yank my chain, Rhys. It’s not goddamn fair.”

Rhys was about to say he hadn’t even known there _was_ a chain to yank, but he stopped short, biting his lip. He had known, a little. Vaughn had always been careful, like he didn’t want to make an issue of it, but sometimes there was a hint of a _look,_ a little accidental closeness that lingered longer than it might, before he covered his emotions up again.

And as for Rhys himself, he considered Vaughn’s wrinkled clothes and his own empty hands—too empty, considering how he’d been holding onto Vaughn this morning. He swallowed hard.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” Rhys said abruptly, because Vaughn was already turning to leave. “I didn’t mean to be an ass about this.”

Vaughn hunched his shoulders. “Just forget about it, then.”

“No, that’s—oh, dammit, Vaughn, give me a minute to explain, okay? It’s…it’s not as one-sided as you think, is all.”

Vaughn paused in the doorway, his eyes widening. Rhys reached for words again, found nothing, and finally groaned, falling backwards onto the bed.

“God, I’m crap at this,” he said to the ceiling.

“That…is obviously true,” Vaughn said slowly. “But you’re gonna have to start at the beginning.”

“How far back is that, even? We’ve known each other a _while._ ”

“Yeah, and the whole time I’ve known you, I was sure you were only into girls. You made a point of that once or twice.”

Admittedly, he kind of had. It hadn’t been in a protest-too-much sort of way, more a constantly-going-on-about-hot-girls-at-his-best-friend sort of way. In retrospect, that may have been a dick move. Rhys covered his face with his hands, then pushed them back, tangling his fingers in his hair. “I thought I was. I thought _you_ were. Hey, you could have told me if you didn’t want me to try setting you up on dates.”

“Uh, I did tell you.”

“I didn’t think that was _why._ I thought you were just trying to get out of going to parties or whatever. Like that whole thing at Beck’s place junior year.”

“In my defense, he _was_ a jerk.” Vaughn made a strange noise, not quite a laugh. “And I mean, hey, none of the girls you threw me at were bad. I even had fun. I just…sorta figured out it wasn’t doing much for me, I guess? For a while, I wasn’t sure if _anyone_ was my thing. But there were…moments.”

Rhys propped himself up on his elbows. “Like what?”

It took a minute for Vaughn to answer. He sat at the end of the bed, in the corner between Rhys’ feet and the rightmost edge. “Well. Some fantasies, or whatever. And I finally had a few, um. Flings. Experiments. Stop _looking_ at me like that.”

Rhys blinked hard. He hadn’t meant to stare. He was, however, both impressed and amazed, and wasn’t sure how to put it into words beyond, “Holy hell, dude, how did you sneak _that_ past me?”

“Maybe you were too busy indulging your own hormones to notice?”

“Um, ouch. But okay, probably true.” He paused. “Really, though, who was it?”

“I am so not telling you that.”

“Come on. I told you about my girlfriends.” _Possibly excessively_ , Rhys thought, _under the circumstances_. “Not even a hint?”

Vaughn gave him a withering look. Rhys subsided, lying back again and waving one hand in surrender. “Fine, keep your mystery dude. Whatever.”

Vaughn made a noise Rhys couldn’t quite identify. Still, it resembled a snicker. Rhys had no idea how to process that. He also suddenly wondered if he’d been right to put “dude” into the singular, and that _really_ blew his mind. For lack of anything sensible to say, he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Vaughn, though, finally sighed, moving onto another thought. “I don’t know if I’d even have considered it if it hadn’t been for you, though. Because yeah, I may have had a crush. But I didn’t know if it was just because we were close anyway and it was wishful thinking, or if it was a more of a pattern, or…honestly, dude, I still don’t know. But that crush? It never really went away.”

Rhys, feeling a weird sort of fluttering deep in his belly, said simply, “Oh.”

Vaughn looked embarrassed, either at Rhys’ reticence or his own confession. Possibly both. “I was just afraid of trying to make this something it couldn’t be. I didn’t want to screw it up.”

Rhys, feeling like the situation called for it, got the rest of the way back upright until he was sitting side by side with Vaughn. The motion made his head ache again, but he pushed that aside. “You wouldn’t have screwed it up. Trust yourself a little more, bro.”

“And what about you?”

The question was pointed. Rhys laughed wryly. “Me? Oh, I would’ve screwed it up. I didn’t have it straight enough in my own head yet. If that’s the word.” He shook his head. “I would’ve been tripping over myself and making no sense, and you’d be thinking who knows what about me, and before long I’d be pushing myself out an airlock out of sheer embarrassment.”

“That would be a waste.”

Rhys glanced down at Vaughn, who’d almost cracked a smile. “So I’m not totally useless, then?”

“Only mostly. But you’re still crap at explaining yourself.”

“Well…God. I don’t know. I don’t have any stories to tell about secret boyfriends or whatever, that wasn’t a thing, but I guess I had moments myself.” He rubbed his aching temple beside the data port. “More just…yeah, a crush or two.”

“Like your thing for Handsome Jack?”

“That’s _not_ a crush,” Rhys said, a little too quickly. “That’s admiration.”

“Right,” Vaughn drawled, unconvinced. “The pinup posters you used to have were purely motivational.”

Rhys reached back, grabbed a pillow, and threw it Vaughn’s direction. Vaughn ducked, laughing, and it _thwumped_ harmlessly into the wall. Where, okay, maybe a poster had been once. Maybe.

“You looked at them, too,” Rhys grumbled.

“Well, they’re kind of hard to miss when they’re _everywhere,_ but again, not the point. You? Crushes on guys? That happened?”

“Sort of? I mean, there are people I admire, right, and wish I could be like, and okay, maybe I’m mostly straight, but I’m not _blind_ , and have you _seen_ some of the guys on the sales team? I swear they hire everyone in that department based on fuckability. It’s like the entire marketing strategy.”

“You would not be wrong,” Vaughn said, in a way that made Rhys wonder anew what Vaughn had been getting up to when he wasn’t looking. He decided not to ask.

“The girls are all goddamn bombshells, too,” Rhys added instead, a little wistfully. “But yeah, it wasn’t only them I was looking at. It was just easier to write that part off, I guess.”

“Right.” Vaughn cleared his throat, venturing the next question more cautiously. “And what about those of us who aren’t, y’know, walking eye candy?”

“If you’re talking yourself down, I’m going to smack you.”

“Come on, Rhys. You know what I mean.”

Rhys, realizing how serious Vaughn was about this, took a deep breath. The feelings tightening his chest were almost too much to explain, and his head was still swimming, but at last he said, “You kind of crept up on me,” and the sideways, wistful smile he gave Vaughn was somehow the most honest thing he’d done all day.

And oh, God, Vaughn’s answering expression was so _hopeful_. Rhys’ skin prickled all over.

“You remember the night before my upgrades?” Rhys said, fiddling with his robotic hand. “When I was starting to freak out about the surgery?”

“Um, yeah. Hard to forget that.”

He wasn’t kidding. Rhys had had to lean on Vaughn for help then, too. And after a talking-to every bit as pointed as this one—because Rhys had to give Vaughn credit, the guy had backbone when it counted—Vaughn had been sympathetic and understanding. And close. Very close. “Intimate” felt like a loaded word somehow, but the way Vaughn had been there, holding Rhys’ hands, looking up at him like that…the soft rush of feeling it provoked had nearly overwhelmed him.

 _Except you acted like a coward and backed off,_ a treacherous inner voice reminded him. _You went off to start breaking things instead. Because you had no goddamn clue what to do._

Rhys winced, curling his robotic fingers in and feeling a weird pang at the lack of sense memory there. All the emotions were coming back regardless.

“I should have said something then,” he said at last. “But it was a near thing.”

“A near thing for what?”

Rhys’ throat tightened. Instead of answering— _God, why can’t I just talk? Why is it so hard to say?_ —he reached out and took one of Vaughn’s hands in his again. This time, though, he let his fingers slip between Vaughn’s, squeezing gently, and he curled the robotic hand protectively around them both.

“Oh,” Vaughn said softly.

“Yeah. Oh.”

They both sounded like they could barely get that simple sound out. This time, though, Vaughn was the one to try a nervous joke. “So I was really that close, and I’ve still been missing out?”

“It’s my bad. But…we could work on that, you know.”

Vaughn didn’t even reply, just stared. Rhys tried to keep his tone light as he lifted the cybernetic hand to touch the corner of his own mouth.

“I mean, obviously you need the kissing practice,” he said. “You sorta missed last time. Got me off-center and all.”

Vaughn pulled loose enough to jab him with an elbow. Rhys, laughing, ducked away. The break in the tension was a tremendous relief, but it didn’t last long. Vaughn was still right there, after all, so close, and still…poised, somehow, right on the edge of something. Rhys cautiously lifted his hand. Vaughn sat very still.

And he stayed there, almost breathless, as Rhys grasped Vaughn’s glasses and slid them off.

“Don’t break those,” Vaughn said by reflex, even as Rhys tossed them aside with little care or patience. At least they landed on Vaughn’s vacated chair. Then Rhys let the fingers of his left hand card back through Vaughn’s hair. Vaughn let out a slow breath, his eyes drifting almost shut. Rhys felt the subtle pressure against his palm as Vaughn instinctively leaned into the touch.

So simple. It was such a simple thing. But something inside him began to uncoil, something warm and aching. Rhys curled his fingers at the back of Vaughn’s neck and tugged, just enough to urge him forward and then—

_Oh._

It was better, so much better, to meet a kiss like this head-on. Even if it was still breathless and careful. Even then. Knowing they were meeting in the middle made it easier, and the second kiss felt inevitable, only parted from the first by a gasp and then a re-angling of heads, a more insistent pressure. And when Vaughn’s hands bunched in the soft fabric at his waist, Rhys felt a shudder of warmth spread through him. His hips shifted, his whole body suddenly restless, and he moved his lips over Vaughn’s, urging him to part his mouth a little more.

He was pretty sure he was about to trip up in some way he couldn’t anticipate—too much, too little, too fast, not the right thing, this was all just too new and he didn’t _know_ —but Vaughn one-upped him by groaning softly and sliding his tongue into Rhys’ mouth. In that moment, Rhys abruptly realized that teasing him about kissing practice had been _completely_ off base, because oh, God, someone really, really had taught Vaughn how to do this. Rhys had to smother a sudden flash of jealousy that it hadn’t been him.

But hey, this was still happening. To him. Right now. Why be jealous?

Why, indeed, when Vaughn’s hands were slipping beneath Rhys’ hoodie to stroke the small of his back, and that little, needy sound he’d just made was too damn hot to be fair, and the kiss was escalating into outright _making out?_

Rhys, lightheaded and swaying with it, tugged at Vaughn a little harder, trying to get him into his lap. _Oh, God, this is happening,_ he thought again, suddenly awash in hazy ideas of what to do next. _This is really happening—_

Well, it was happening until suddenly it wasn’t. Rhys’ whole body protested when Vaughn pulled back for air, his chest heaving. “Oh. Oh, God.”

Rhys chuckled, aiming for the joke. “Yes?”

Vaughn gave him a half-hearted jab. “Not what I meant, jackass.” He breathed in deep again. Rhys felt Vaughn move with it, marveling faintly that he was still close enough that he could. And Vaughn’s hands were still on his skin, so warm and firm, bracing him in place like that… “Rhys? Mmmh—oh, just a second…”

That little groan was undoubtedly prompted by Rhys bending down and nuzzling at him, kissing his temple softly. It took Rhys a moment to sit back up again. “What is it?”

“Oh, hell. Okay. You have no _idea_ how much I want to do this, but—dude, focus.”

Rhys tried. The blood rush was admittedly doing several fascinating things to his equilibrium, and even his ECHO eye took a second to catch up. When it did, his head suddenly throbbed again. “Ow, crap.”

“And _that’s_ what I was afraid of.”

Vaughn pulled back again with obvious reluctance, although one hand went to Rhys’ cheek, at least. Rhys leaned into it, humming softly, if a little uncertainly. He felt caught between pleasure and another incipient headache, and didn’t know which way to move to encourage one and push back the other. Vaughn watched him closely.

“You haven’t even eaten today, have you?” Vaughn asked.

“Oh, God, Vaughn, what a time to start playing nursemaid—“

“Shut up. And you _haven’t._ You started the day with a full-out systems crash, then you as good as passed out on me for hours, now this? I _think_ that might be a little much right now.”

He had a point, but Rhys still had to bite back disappointment—especially since Vaughn’s hand was lowering, that lovely point of heat fading. He tried one last time at persuasion. “Come on. I’m up for it. I’m…” He shifted a little where he sat. “Wow, am I still up for it.”

Vaughn blushed. “I know, but—“

“And I know you’re getting hard, too.”

Vaughn outright shuddered that time, but in a good, good way, his lips parting with the pleasure of it. “That voice, saying that, is _dirty fucking pool,_ Rhys.”

Rhys laughed low in his throat. “I know.”

Vaughn shook his head, a faint smile curving his mouth. When he kissed Rhys again, it was softer, sweeter, but very much—at least for the moment—final. “It can wait. Food first. I’ll order something.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Vaughn looked down at himself. “And agh, I need to change my clothes.“

“Yeah, you’re looking a little…ravished.”

“Oh, my God.” Vaughn stood up, looking as exasperated as anyone with a lingering hard-on possibly could. “So says the guy who’s so turned on that his diagnostics light is flashing again.”

“What? Wait…it is?”

Rhys touched his data port self-consciously when Vaughn eyed him. He pulled up his internal ECHO display, and sure enough, the self-check system was pinging a little alert. “Oh, God,” he said, through a self-deprecating laugh. “I guess I hadn’t…re-calibrated it for that yet.”

“You do that, then. Me? Shower. Cold one. By myself. Then food. Then…” He angled another odd little look at Rhys, part amazement, part hope. “Then we’ll see.”

He was gone before Rhys could say anything else.

In his absence, it was quiet. It was also a whole lot colder. Rhys sat back, curling up a little deeper into his hoodie, and tried for a couple minutes just to breathe. For one thing, he thought a little sheepishly, he _really_ needed to calm down. For another…

 _Holy shit,_ he kept thinking, as if every bit of his body wasn’t still humming with it. _That just happened._

_Me and Vaughn._

_That…just happened._

He scrubbed his hands against both thighs—maybe the sweat-drying gesture only worked for one hand anymore, but the reflex still remained—then looked up. 

Rhys had one small mirror in the room, enough for the basic morning primping so he and Vaughn weren’t stuck fighting over the bathroom mirror. He was plenty used to seeing his own face there. He was even getting used to the new cybernetics. He wasn’t, however, used to _this_. His reflection looked all disheveled, his cheeks still flushed, his lips a little swollen. His right eye was dilated, and the left was gleaming faintly with its own light. Right about now, he made a hell of a picture. He’d just been teasing Vaughn about looking ravished, but he was amazed Vaughn hadn’t flung the term at him first, considering.

Rhys got up and leaned close, gingerly touching the mirror with two fingers. That was…a whole new angle of himself, right there. A whole new idea he’d never considered.

 _Me and Vaughn_. _I’d never thought. But…_

He was still standing there when Vaughn called a question from the other side of the door. “Hey, Rhys?”

“What?”

He wasn’t sure what to expect, especially the way his thoughts were spinning. Paranoia, perhaps inevitably, spoke up first. Maybe Vaughn was already having second thoughts. Maybe he was about to tell Rhys this was all a terrible idea, they shouldn’t ever have made out like that, and to just forget the whole thing. Or…

The actual question was so mundane it might have been asked on any night at all. “How do you feel about pizza?”

Rhys blinked, trying to switch gears. “Uh—“

“Because I just got a text from Yvette warning me that the sushi order she got tonight was still, like, crawling. And…ew. And—oh, crap, she sent me _pictures._ ”

Rhys ducked his head, suddenly laughing. Just like that, everything felt all right. That was definitely still Vaughn out there: still familiar and ordinary in the best way, and every bit the friend he knew, which was just the reassurance Rhys needed. Because no matter how different things suddenly were, no matter how much they’d just changed…

He looked at his own reflection again. Everything there looked so much more _right_ when he smiled.

“Yeah, Vaughn,” he called back. “I think I can work with that.”

He pushed himself back upright, and went to join Vaughn again for whatever the evening had in store.

And if he’d meant a whole lot more by what he’d just said than the immediate question warranted, well, no one but him and his reflection ever had to know.


End file.
